FICTIONAL OBJECTS - HOW THEY ARE AND HOW THEY ARENT

The paper considers recent logico-semantical attempts to understand our claims about - and the ontological status of - fictional objects. I first discuss Terence Parsons' quasi-actualist, Meinongian treatment of fictional objects; the idea that fictional objects are nonactual but well-individuated objects existing in metaphysically possible worlds; non-referential, substitutional-quantification-style accounts (as by John Woods) of such objects; and Alvin Plantinga's, David Kaplan's and Kendall Walton's de dicto-style modal approaches to fictional objects. Then I argue for my own approach, which is that fictional objects are nonactual but well-individuated entities that exist in a variety of fictional worlds. Finally, I defend my approach against both unwarranted demands for ontological austerity and a powerful argument recently offered by Kaplan, Plantinga, and Saul Kripke. My overall conclusions are consonant with, although logically independent of, the view of pictured objects provided in my papers in Theoria, 1974, and Synthese, 1976. © 1979.